Commissions High

"This is another way of thinking about the Empire. I chose these five books because I wanted to bear out Ronald Hyam’s observation that it is an astonishingly complicated and varied phenomenon and there are different ways of coming at it. What Roy MacLaren’s book is all about is to look at the official relations between Canada, the senior dominium in the British Empire, and Britain, as mediated through these figures. These were the High Commissioners – that is to say, in non-Empire or Commonwealth terms, the ambassadors from Canada to Britain. There is a whole set of themes here. One of the more interesting figures that he talks about is this remarkable man called Lord Strathcona, who is indeed a classic Scottish immigrant to Canada, who then makes a fortune via the Canadian Pacific Railway and the Bank of Montreal and a whole variety of other industries. He then comes back to Britain and is the Canadian High Commissioner to Britain. Lord Strathcona could have walked straight out of Devine’s book. And then there is this extraordinary patrician figure Vincent Massey, from a very grand Canadian family, who is the Canadian High Commissioner during World War II and chairs the trustees of the National Gallery in London and subsequently is the first Canadian Governor General of Canada. They had previously always been British aristocrats. The later period explores the gradual disintegration of that Anglo-Canadian British imperial world as Canada gets drawn more and more economically and culturally into the orbit of the United States, and as Britain becomes more concerned with Europe than with the Empire or Commonwealth. And as Canada (as is equally the case in Australia and New Zealand) de-dominionises. That is to say it gets its own flag and national anthem and has its own honours system and it repatriates the constitution and thereby establishes itself as a much more independent nation. But despite closer ties with the United States, many Canadians are still very annoyed if they are mistaken for Americans, and one of the reasons they still like the monarchy is that it is a way of not being American! Rumours of its death have been around for a long time and it has shown no sign of expiring yet. It is clear that at the recent Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting in Perth there were some fairly trenchant observations about what the Commonwealth is for and what it is doing. On the other hand it does provide a forum for leaders of countries with very varied histories, economies, cultures and backgrounds to talk to each other, which can be a good thing."